Labels are a single word or a multiple word phrase you can add to the default language version of a specific article in your help center. You can use labels to influence article search relevance, to influence Answer Bot results (if you are using Answer Bot), or tocreate a list of related articlesbased on labels.
You can add and remove labels on individual articles or you can change labels on multiple articles at once. You must have Guide Professional or Enterprise to use article labels.
Adding and removing labels on individual articles
Labels are a single word or a multiple word phrase you can add to the default language version of an article in your help center. You can add articles labels for multiple purposes, including to influence search and Answer Bot results or to create article lists (seeUnderstanding why to use labels).
You can add and remove labels on individual articles or you canchange labels in bulk for multiple articlesat once.
- In your help center or Guide, navigate to the article where you want to change labels, then clickEdit articlein the top menu bar.
- (Guide Enterprise only) If you are on Guide Enterprise, clickArticle settings.
This step is not necessary on Guide Professional.
- InLabelsin the right sidebar, start typing the label you want to add, then selectAdd as new labelor select the matching label, if it exists. Article labels are not case-sensitive.
You can add a maximum of 50 labels. You might have to scroll down to see labels. SeeBest practices for adding labels.
标签的默认语言文章,没有生活t on translations of the article. If you have translations, you can add labels in multiple languages to the default article.
- Add multiple labels as needed.
- 如果需要删除一个标签,单击xside the label name.
- ClickSave.
你必须管理标签在每个单独的文章orusing the API. There is no global management for article labels.
Changing article labels in bulk on multiple articles
You can add or remove labels to on multiple articles at once.
- In Guide, click theManage articles(
) icon in the sidebar. - Find the articles you want to update by browsing, searching, orusing a new or existing articles list.
- Select one or more articles to change labels.
You can select a maximum of 30 articles at a time.
- Click theArticle settingsmenu at the bottom, then selectChange labels.
- Do any of the following:
- Add a new label:Enter the label, then clickAdd as a new label.
- Add an existing label:Search or browse to find the labels you want to add, then select any empty checkbox or any checkbox with a minus.
The minus sign (
) indicates that the label appears on some but not all of the selected articles. When you select it, it changes to a checkmark (
), indicating that it will be added to any selected article that doesn't already have that label.You can select multiple labels to add to the selected articles.
- Remove an existing label:Search or browse to find the labels you want to remove, then deselect one or more labels.
The checkmark (
) indicates that the label appears on all of the selected articles. The minus sign () indicates that the label appears on some but not all of the selected articles. When you select a checkbox with a minus sign, it changes to a checkmark.; click it again to deselect the checkbox.You can select multiple labels to add to the selected articles.
- Add a new label:Enter the label, then clickAdd as a new label.
- ClickChange.
The label changes are applied to the selected articles.
Understanding why to use labels
- Influence article search relevance
Adding labels can make your articles more search friendly. They are not designed to be used for fine-grained control of ranking. For example, if I have two articles about making waffles, one with the word "temperature" in the body of the article, one with the label "temperature", the labeled article will be ranked higher if a user searches for the word "temperature".
标签与少一点weig索引搜索ht than the article title, but multiple labels with similar words can outweigh the title and body of the article. Use labels carefully as you can significantly impact the relevance of your search results and usefulness. If you are considering using labels to impact search relevance, consider that efforts to do so could end up with inferior ranking performance for your users. The best way to have your article perform well in search is to create a short and focused article, where the title and body include keywords and clearly connect to each other.
To learn more about search, seeHow end-user search works in your help center.
- Influence Answer Bot results
Answer Bot uses labels to influence the results it shows. It allows you to define a whitelist of articles that are allowed to be used when looking for relevant matching results. You are able to add up to ten labels that serve as an OR filter, allowing you to expand the whitelist to any articles containing any of the defined labels.
To learn more about Answer Bot, seeAbout Answer Bot.
- Create article lists
文章列表让你得到所有的概述your published and unpublished knowledge base content, and then refine that view by using search and applying filters to build article lists. For example, you can find articles that have a specific article label, such as out-of-date.
To learn more about article lists, seeCreating article lists to different views of your knowledge base content.
Best practices for adding labels
Labels can help boost the search relevance of an article. However, you should use labels carefully and sparingly. It's more important to make sure the article title and body contain the relevant keywords.
- Use single word labels where possible, instead of multi-word phrases
It is possible to add labels as single words or as multiple words or phrases. In general, it's more efficient to use single word labels. If you add a multi-word label, the search engine breaks it into individual words to perform the search. For example, if you have a label of "late delivery," it gets broken down into "late" and "delivery" for search.
Avoid using long phrases as labels to boost an article's ranking with respect to a query. For example, "Can I return something I ordered online to my local store." Instead, you should modify the article's title or content to make it literally relevant to the query.
- Do not include variations of the same word, including different tenses or plural forms
You do not need to include multiple labels for variations of a word. For example you do not need a label for "return" and "returns" or "update" and "updated." Search stemming allows different forms of the same word to match. In particular, the singular and plural forms of a word will generally match.
- Use a limited number of labels, instead of overloading an article with labels
Use labels sparingly. Adding lots of labels might actually diminish any matches on labels. This is because it is assumed that matches with a fewer number of labels beats matches with more labels. And too many labels might outweigh the relevance of the title and body.
For example, if article 1 has the labels “car,” “automobile,” and “transport” and article 2 has only the label “car,” all other things equal, if the end-user searches for “car,” the article that has only the label “car” will rank higher. That is because, as a general principle, an article that is about one specific thing is more relevant than an article about many things, when a user is looking for that one specific thing.
Your best bet is to look at the top ranked search queries and make sure that they exist in either (but not both) the title or the labels. You don't give content an extra boost if you match a term across the title, body, labels, and comments.
Using the help center API to filter articles by labels
These two endpoints behave differently and will return different article results. They are programmatically different and query different data sources for their results. The Articles endpoint queries the Help Center database, whereas the Search endpoint uses native Help Center search. As a result, relevancy matching determines which articles return in the label query for the Search endpoint. SeeAbout Help Center end-user searchfor more information about how native Help Center search works.
55 Comments
Hi, how can I download a list of all the articles and corresponding labels please so I can review outside of the Help Centre?
Hi@...,
While it is not possible at this time to download a list of articles and corresponding labels from the product, I found a few posts where other options are discussed:
Please also upvote or post additional feedback for our Product Team in the Community Feedback sections. I hope this helps!
Hi Guys,
Just wanted to let you know when you click onusing the API. and using theHelp center API: this message comes up
Thanks for the heads-up, Anthony! I'll alert our documentation team.
Can I set the Label to show to the end-user?
(show the labels at the front of Help center)
Good day,
I would like to include a phrase as a Label and only have my article show in the Answer bot and Search results if that phrase is in the ticket. Here's my example. I have an article about "project codes". I don't want users to see my article if they only type or search for "codes" or "project". Can this be done?
Thanks
Hello!
It is not a supported feature to provide a list of labels to end users, as it will be more efficient for the customer to type in their question rather than search through labels.
To answer Tracey's question - using multi-word phrases in labels is not a practice we support because there isn’t a way to train Answer Bot on certain phrases and have it return articles based on a multi-word phrase. More information on our Answer Bot label best practices can be found in this article:Best Practices: Using labels in Answer Bot triggers
I hope this helps clarify your questions!
Malinda - Customer Advocate
Zendesk offers free, on-demand training for all of our products. Set up your account and start learning today attraining.zendesk.com
Hi,
Where is the option to see all the labels currently made/used?
Hi Maarten,
You can list all labels used in your Help Center articles via API. Instructions on how to accomplish this can be found in our developer documentation:List All Labels
I hope this helps!
Malinda - Customer Advocate
Zendesk offers free, on-demand training for all of our products. Set up your account and start learning today attraining.zendesk.com
This is good to know! Initially, I thought labels were basically tags, and I didn't realize they were related to search logic or the answer bot. It would be really helpful to help people make the best use of their help center articles if there was a small blurb or link or something IN the article editor explaining the purpose of the labels or linking to this article. Like "See here for how to use labels"
Hi Erin, thanks for this feedback! To increase its visibility, would you mind creating a post in ourFeedback on Guidetopic? Thanks!
Hi, Is there anywhere I can see a full list of labels that my team has created? I want to make sure we're not doubling up and adding new labels that we already have.
Hi Rich –
There isn't a place in the Guide UI where you can see all your labels, but it's possible to use the API to see it:
List All Labels
If you're logged in to your Zendesk account, just open a new browser tab and enter this (substituting your Zendesk subdomain):
https://mysubdomain.zendesk.com/api/v2/help_center/articles/labels.json
and it should give you a list of all your article labels. If you search online for JSON converters, you should be able to find a page that will allow you to convert the API output to CSV or another format that will likely be more readable.
Hope this helps!
Thanks Dave, That's awesome.
On Friday I stumbled on the fact that you can see all your labels in theManage Articlespage by clicking Filters > Labels.
It would make a lot more sense to be able to see labels in theLabelsmenu when creating an article. It even has a drop-down button but when you click it nothing happens!?!
Furthermore, I have no idea how to delete old or incorrect labels. Is that also done via the App?
Whoever's job it was to work on labels obviously didn't finish it. Probably another example of Agile methodology misinterpreted.
When will we be able to run a report in Explore based on labels? I have a label I used on 30 articles related to a specific project. The articles are found across various categories and sections. I have to run nine different reports every week to report out on the viewership of these articles for the project. Since I also need to break views down by user (internal vs external) - it takes a loooooonnng time!
Is there any way to report on labels?
For example, I want to list every article in X category that doesn't have a Y label.
We're trying to use Answer Bot and since AnswerBot can only make filtering decisions based on labels I end up with many questions about what labels are applied where and I can't find them in Explore.
Hey, Dimitri!
Reporting for article labels in Explore for Guide isn't available yet. I understand this is not the answer you were hoping for, but you can up-vote thispostand add your detailed use-case to the conversation. Threads with a high level of engagement ultimately get flagged for product managers to review when they go through roadmap planning.
Cheers!
Ahn L. | Customer Support Advocate
In the Overview it say you can "create a list of related articles based on labels." No where in this article explains how to do that. How can this be done?
Hi Matthew,
Here's some general information on creating article lists (labels can be used as a criteria for them):Using article lists for different views of your knowledge base content
I understand that Answer Bot does not support multi-word phrases for labels. Is it possible to use hyphens or underscores instead? For example, "add_item" or "add-item"?
Thank you in advance!
Hello Marcella!
Yes, you are correct! In order to have multi-word phrases for labels, the best way is to use underscores. Hyphens should work the same way, but we believe underscores offer a better experience when reading the labels.
If you have a label like "test_label" you could make a search in your Help Centre for "test", "label", "test_label" and "test label" and these will all provide you with the article with that label, so this is very flexible :)
Thanks for your question, I hope this was helpful!
Thanks, Beto, I appreciate you replying. Just one more question to clarify: If a customer searches for "order issue" will an article with a label of "order_issue" come up in their search query? We seem to have most of our customers searching multi-word phrases so this would be super helpful if this was the case.
Hi Marcella!
Yes, I wanted to test this myself just in case, so I created a label called "test_label" and when I searched on my Help Centre for "test label" it gave me the appropriate article. This menas that adding labels with multi-word phrases separated with underscores would allow your clients to search for multi-word phrases separated by regular spaces.
Let us know if you have any questions!
We have just begun setting up multi-language translations on our Zendesk Guide, and I can see from the first sentence in this article that "Labels are a single word or a multiple word phrase you can add to thedefault language versionof a specific article in your help center."
Is there any possibility of consideration for a future enhancement to the guide tool to allow labels to be different on non-default language articles which have been forked/translated? I'm guessing right now it is coded so that labels are only attached to the primary version of the article, but that basically makes it so you cannot define search terms in other languages for the translated articles. That essentially means they will be more difficult to both find and be automated recommendations, no?
@...I have authored the following at your recommendation:
Translated Labels for Translated Articles – Zendesk help
Hey Chad, my understanding is actually that while labels are only "attached" to the default language, they stillimpact search resultseven in non-default languages - meaning that you could add labels indicating synonyms or other alternative search terms to the default language and they would have the desired effect on search results in the non-default languages.
I have some articles with videos that refer to an item by its name and I want to add labels with the model number. I see above that prefixes/suffixes don't matter (ex. update vs. updated), but how far can I push that? All colors of the item would start with the same four numbers, but I don't seem to effectively be able to use just those four numbers as a label.
Question: if we wanted to use labels internally to facilitate identifying related pieces of information how would this impact external search:
e.g., if I wanted all information about X identified, and I assigned X a label with a numerical string.. say 123456789 (so that all articles that include information about X could be retrieved by someone searching for that exact numerical string) would this impact external searches? (assuming that on one external would be searching for 123456789?
Hi Zendesk folks,
Can I edit or delete a label?
I don't currently use them, but am wary of starting if I can't edit them, or correct a spelling mistake, for instance.
Pleasesign into leave a comment.